


Fall One on the Other

by reginalds



Series: Dameron's Delights [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Part II, pie shop in space AU!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 17:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginalds/pseuds/reginalds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Finn has been with Poe for three months, sleeping in his bed and eating his food, charming the pants off the regulars and the power sockets off BB-8, Poe digs out the dusty holo-file of the lease agreement he signed when he opened <i>Dameron’s Delights</i>.</p><p>“Hey buddy,” he calls into the kitchen, where Finn is examining the gorgonzola he imported for a batch of meat and cheese pies. “You got a last name you want to use?”</p><p>“Why?” Finn calls back. “I thought you said cheese wasn’t supposed to be blue.”</p><p>“I want to write you into my lease agreement as a co-owner of the shop,” Poe says firmly. “Some kinds of cheese are meant to be blue.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall One on the Other

**Author's Note:**

> Hint: You should probably read [Dameron’s Delights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5721649) before diving into this sequel. 
> 
> There’s a little more movie canon in this story than the first, but this is still a story about love - about sustaining, after falling - with a little humour, a little action, and a lot of old and new favourites. 
> 
> A/N: Not gonna lie, writing this has been exhausting and frustrating and frequently made me doubt myself, in between fleeting moments of being happy with the way the story was going. I’ve never been so nervous to post anything here before, especially after the exceedingly kind response to Dameron’s Delights. All of that said, I am ultimately proud with how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it too. Thanks, as always, for reading. It means the universe to me.

_Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other._  
_Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet._  
  
\- Jules Verne 

When Finn has been with Poe for three months, sleeping in his bed and eating his food, charming the pants off the regulars and the power sockets off BB-8, Poe digs out the dusty holo-file of the lease agreement he signed when he opened Dameron’s Delights.

“Hey buddy,” he calls into the kitchen, where Finn is examining the gorgonzola he imported for a batch of meat and cheese pies. “You got a last name you want to use?”

“Why?” Finn calls back. “I thought you said cheese wasn’t supposed to be blue.”

“I want to write you into my lease agreement as a co-owner of the shop,” Poe says firmly. “Some kinds of cheese are meant to be blue.”

Finn makes a face and puts the gorgonzola back in the coolers. “Why can’t I just use yours?”

“My… cheese?”

“Your name,” Finn says easily, loping out of the kitchen and throwing a comfortable arm around Poe’s shoulders. “Finn Dameron. That’s not so bad, right?”

Poe puts the holo-file down more clumsily than he intends, and winces at the sound it makes against the counter. “No, that’s not bad at all,” he says, a little hoarse. Finn beams at him and kisses his temple, his lips cool against Poe’s heated skin.

“Finn Dameron it is, then.” He says, and sits down beside Poe. “As co-owner, my first decree is that we don’t cook with gorgonzola.”

“Jess imported it from halfway across the galaxy!”

“It’s _blue_.”

“Bantha milk is blue,” Poe says. “Sometimes cheese is blue! It’s not a big deal.”

Finn pouts exaggeratedly and Poe scrubs a hand across his face, before reaching determinedly for the holo-file. “I am signing you into this lease,” he says. “And then we’re going to have a serious conversation about cheese.”

Finn grins at him, and cups big hands around Poe’s shoulders. “Thank you, Poe Dameron,” he says, quietly, and Poe smiles, tapping him lightly on the shoulder with his stylus.

“You’re welcome, Finn Dameron.”

+

Days at the pie shop pass steadily, nights becoming days like taffy stretching and retracting. There aren’t seasons on their moon, but Poe has always preferred the second half of the solar cycle to the first. The days seem clearer, and their distant sun seems to sink below the horizon later in the day.

“There’s a big freighter coming in,” Finn says one morning, jerking his chin up to the green-blue sky. He’s come back from the market with BB-8 and a sack of vegetables for dinner, and is helping Poe scrub zucchini, their hips bumping with every other movement. “Scavenger ship from Jakku, people are saying. There was some kind of First Order trouble in one of the desert settlements. It’s carrying refugees.”

He says it offhand, but his hands are clenched tight enough around the brush he’s holding that his knuckles show through the skin. He’s jumpy, too, craning his neck to peer out of the wide windows at the front of the shop, as BB-8 meanders aimlessly between tables, pushing chairs into place.

Poe sets down his vegetable brush and steps close, wraps a hand around the back of Finn’s neck and presses a soft kiss to his forehead. He stays like that for a beat, just breathing, and trying to pass along the feelings of calm, safe, and home that he knows Finn needs.

It takes a minute before Finn droops against him, but he does eventually, and presses his forehead against Poe’s shoulder.

“They’re not going to come here,” Poe murmurs, pressing kisses to the worried line between Finn’s eyebrows. “And if they do, they’re not going to take you. I won’t let them.”

“You don’t know what they can do,” Finn says. He tries to pull away, but subsides easily when Poe holds him fast. “They can take anything they want. They _do_ take anything they want.”

“Not you,” Poe says, “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Finn exhales shakily into the curve of Poe’s neck. His breath sends a familiar warmth through Poe’s veins, a slow flush of desire that slips beneath his skin from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. Poe breathes it in, and holds on to Finn, his lips touching his hairline, his ear lobe, and the curve of his jaw, until Finn is smiling again.

They share a kiss, and then a deeper one, and then another that ends abruptly when BB-8 knocks the sack full of zucchini onto the kitchen floor.

+

The ship from Jakku docks two days later, a hulking mass of metal scarred with spaceflight and age. The crew unloads spare parts first, crate after crate of scavenged, blackened engine components that are hauled away for auction at the market.

The people come next: refugees in light-colored clothing with bags on their backs and wary looks on their faces.

Finn and Poe watch them disembark from inside the pie shop as they step tentatively off of the freighter and find their way through the bustling spaceport crowds. It’s mostly women, young and old, and children with dirty faces. One of them shepherds everyone else off the ship: a young woman with a staff, and her hair wrapped in a tan scarf against the slight chill in the air. While they watch, she calms a crying boy, and leads him back to his mother, nodding shortly at the mother’s fervent thanks.

It takes over an hour for the crowd of refugees to disperse, most of them to the market, or to other ships to find work and passage off the moon. The girl with the staff is one of the last to leave. She has a small bag, and she hoists it over her shoulder while she takes a last look at the freighter, before lifting her chin and turning her back on it, marching away and disappearing in the colorful crowds milling around the market stalls.

“Where will they all go?” Finn whispers, and Poe shrugs.

“They’ll find work,” he says, “or they won’t, and they’ll try another planet.”

“Do you think they’ll ever make it home?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s not much to see in Jakku, so maybe it’s better that they’re out here. At least it’s somewhere new. Not as dangerous.”

Finn hums, and kisses Poe’s cheek sweetly, hurrying away behind the counter to pour a cup of cafe con leche for one of the regulars.

Poe watches him for a moment, and then takes a last look out of the window. He catches another glimpse of the girl among the market crowds, haggling with a Rodian over an engine part she’s pulled out of her bag. The Rodian draws himself up to his full height, gesturing wildly, but the girl stands her ground, and seems to win the argument, taking a fistful of shiny ration packets in exchange for the scavenged part. Poe smiles despite himself, and heads back to the kitchen when Finn shouts out an order for a slice of peach cobbler.

+

It’s clear and cold the next morning, and Poe draws his fingers along Finn’s shoulder, and down to his bare hip, where the sheets are tangled around his legs and his pyjama pants have slipped down while he sleeps. The cot in his spare room is gathering dust – Finn hasn’t slept there in weeks, and Poe has gotten used to another body beside his, curling into his side while he dreams, and burrowing into his arms on bad nights.

He extricates himself from the bed with some reluctance, and kisses the corner of Finn’s sleepy mouth before dressing, washing his face, and heading downstairs to start the coffee and the breakfast scones and the bread.

BB-8 trundles over from his charging station and bumps softly into the back of Poe’s shins in greeting, whirring when Poe slides a hand over his domed head. Finn appears in the kitchen half an hour later, wearing one of Poe’s softest shirts and blinking sleep from his eyes.

He kisses Poe and pats BB-8 absently on his way to the coffee maker, content to follow Poe around the kitchen as he slides loaves of bread into and out of the oven, and passes hot scones to Finn for breakfast.

Finn slices fruit for the pies after he’s eaten: ripe pears slippery with juice; plump, red strawberries; stalks of fresh rhubarb. He hums while he works, the snatch of song he remembers his mother singing to him, and Poe hums along with him, making up a melody to fill in the parts of the song that Finn can’t remember.

The shop gets busy at noon, a steady stream of customers wandering in for sandwiches and slices of pie. One or two of the refugees from Jakku come in as well, taking their time examining everything in the display case before settling on loaves of fresh bread that they pay for with strange currency.

“I don’t think this is legal tender,” Finn says, turning the jagged coins over in his hands after the women have left. Poe shrugs.

“They were hungry. I don’t mind making a donation.”

“You are a terrible businessman, Poe Dameron,” Finn says, and kisses him quickly before heading back over to pour a fresh cup of coffee for the alien at the counter who keeps slinging their tentacles at the direction of the espresso machine.

+

On most days, they close the shop just before eating dinner, and Finn and BB-8 wipe down the tables and clean the surfaces in the kitchen while Poe cooks. They eat in their small apartment above the pie shop, by the window that overlooks the docking bays, at the scarred wooden table that Poe inherited after his parents’ passed away. It’s made of wood from trees felled in the forests of Yavin 4, and it’s built to withstand wars. It’s too big for the two of them, but just fine if they sit together, on one edge.

“I asked Jess about sex,” Finn says while they’re washing dishes, and grins sheepishly when Poe drops the ceramic plate he’s holding.

“ _Why_?” Poe manages, and Finn shrugs.

“Because I want to have sex with you, and I don’t speak binary well enough to ask BB-8 about it.”

Poe pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Jess is never going to let me live this down.”

“She laughed at me a lot,” Finn says easily, sitting down at their kitchen table, and winding the dish towel he’s holding around one fist. “But then she was very helpful.”

“Oh god.” Poe slumps into a seat and presses his forehead against the table. He’s not sure if he should be flattered that Finn wants to have sex with him, or so embarrassed he might actually burst into flames. When he manages to lift his head off the table, Finn is a lot closer than he was before, and his eyes are  on Poe’s mouth.

“What did Jess tell you?” Poe asks, and tries to keep the smirk off his face when Finn struggles to shift his gaze up to his eyes.

“She talked to me about consent,” he says, soberly, and Poe lifts a hand to trail his fingers gently down Finn’s jaw. Something deep inside of him aches when he thinks about how ‘consent’ is not a term Finn knew, before he met Jess and Poe. “And she told me to be more subtle,” Finn continues, twisting his head so he can bite at Poe’s fingers.

Poe raises an eyebrow. Finn’s eyes are back on his mouth, and he’s leaning far enough out of his chair that he’s just about kneeling at Poe’s feet. “Is this you being subtle?” He asks, and Finn shrugs.

“I didn’t pay too much attention to that part,” he admits. “I was more interested in the bedroom stuff.”

Poe groans, and lets his head fall onto Finn’s shoulder. “We’re going to stop talking about Jess now,” he says.

“Are we going to go to the bedroom?” Finn asks, and Poe can hear him grinning.

“Yes,” he says, with all the dignity he can muster. “Yes we are.”

Finn pushes Poe against the wall as they make their way out of the kitchen, knocking him against it heavily enough that there’s an alarmed squeak from BB-8, downstairs in the pie shop. They both freeze, and Finn giggles nervously, the sound melting into a happy sigh when Poe grazes his collarbone with his teeth.

In the bedroom, Finn trips over a pair of boots Poe discarded on the floor that morning, and they go down on the bed in a tangle of limbs. The air rushes out of Poe’s chest when Finn lands on him, and he sucks in a hasty breath as Finn pushes himself up on his elbows and grins down at him.

“Hey,” Poe whispers. He strokes his thumbs across Finn’s cheekbones, up to his temples, and then down to his lips. Finn nips at his fingers, and Poe smiles at him, giving into the slow, warm feeling that’s spreading in his chest. Finn’s eyes widen, and he ducks his head, pressing his forehead against Poe’s collarbone.

“Don’t _do_ that,” he mutters, and Poe draws a smug hand across the small of Finn’s back.

“Why not?” He asks innocently, and Finn raises his head, squints at Poe’s expression and tucks his head back beneath Poe’s chin.

“Because it’ll make my brain explode,” he says, and Poe laughs, drawing his hand back and forth across Finn’s back, smiling at the warm gusts of Finn’s breath against his skin.

“You want this too, right?” Finn asks, after a moment of silence. Poe blinks.

“Are you kidding me?” He asks, and Finn lifts his head up again, studying his expression. “ _Finn_ ,” Poe says, squeezing his eyes shut, “sleeping beside you fully clothed these last few months is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

“One of the _hardest_...?” Finn starts, waggling his eyebrows, and Poe groans loudly enough to drown out the rest of his sentence. He rolls, knocking Finn onto his back, and pressing him into the tangled blankets on their bed with his weight. It’s been months since Poe slept with anyone with the light on, outside of a quick, intoxicated fumble at a party. It’s been years since he’s had anyone in his bed, and he tightens his thighs around Finn’s hips, pressing his hands against his chest for stability.

Finn looks startled for a moment, and then he settles tentative hands on Poe’s hips and presses his fingers slowly into the muscle, hard enough to bruise. Poe rolls his hips, just once, and presses Finn gently back into the bed when he gasps and bucks his hips wildly. 

“Just breathe,” Poe murmurs, bending over Finn to press a kiss to each corner of his mouth. “Let me take care of you.”

“You’re always taking care of me,” Finn manages, inhaling shakily as Poe grazes his teeth against his neck. “I want to take care of you.” 

“You can take care of me next time,” Poe says, and grins when Finn nods so enthusiastically it looks like he bites his tongue. “This time is about you, though, okay?” 

“Okay,” Finn repeats, frowning when Poe sits up and tugs at Finn’s shirt. It takes a moment for Finn to get with the program, but when he does, he does so with gusto, tugging off his shirt so carelessly that he nearly clocks Poe in the nose with a rogue elbow. Poe pushes him back down and tugs his trousers open and down over hips that Finn obligingly lifts from the bed. Poe’s mouth goes dry at the sight.

“You still okay?” He murmurs, pausing with his fingers curled beneath the waistband of Finn’s underwear. At Finn’s nod, he peels the briefs down his hips and throws them off into a corner of the room.

“Very, very okay.” Finn says, a little nonsensically, and Poe takes a moment to sit back and look at him.

Finn whines. He has one arm thrown across his eyes, and is clutching desperately at the sheets near his hips with the other. Something in Poe’s chest swells at the sight, and he leans over, pushing kisses into the smooth skin stretched across Finn’s ribs, into the softness around his middle. Finn whines again, a little frantically this time, and Poe bites perfunctorily at the smooth skin above Finn’s hipbone before taking him into his mouth.

Finn shouts and Poe pushes against his straining hips, pulling off and  murmuring encouragements against his skin until Finn subsides and sinks back into the mess of blankets beneath him. Finn is already shaking when Poe wraps a hand around him, and it’s over in just a few minutes, when Finn goes taut beneath Poe’s hands and chokes out a wrecked cry as he spills into Poe’s mouth.

Poe swallows, and presses gentle kisses to the insides of Finn’s thighs until the shaking subsides. Above him, Finn is breathing hard, one hand still clutched in the sheets.

“Holy kriffing shit,” he says, and Poe bats gently at his arm.

 “Language,” he admonishes, and laughs and laughs when Finn surges up to tackle him down into the blankets.

The next morning, Jess takes one look from her delivery of extra-fine flour at their faces, and whoops, high-fiving Finn while Poe shakes his head and goes to hide in the kitchen until she’s gone.

+

Sometimes it rains on their moon: a driving, stinging rain that sweeps through the spaceport and drives everyone indoors.

Finn watches it come down in a booth at the front of the shop, staring through windows smeared with the downpour, while Poe makes a pot of strong tea, and drags Finn into the kitchen to help with the cooking.

“What are we making today?” Finn asks, his hand heavy on the curve of Poe’s waist. He’s warm, and Poe swallows past the predictable swoop in his stomach, because today they are making pepían, and pepían is important.

“Pepían,” he says, and jumps when Finn plasters a hand against his ass as he reaches for an onion. “Finn.”

Finn’s grinning at him, wide and unabashed, and Poe rolls his eyes and leans in for a warm kiss that turns into two, and then three, and then: “Finn.” Poe says sternly. “Pepían _.”_

“Okay, okay,” Finn takes a step backwards, and nearly falls over BB-8, who trills unrepentantly. “Tell me about pepían.”

So Poe tells him about his mother’s recipe, the chili peppers and the spices he paid an arm and a leg for, just to make it taste like home. They’ve got a cut of meat from the market, which tastes like chicken if you ignore the fact that the animal it came from has three eyes and a horn. Finn slices onions carefully, and rolls peppercorns between his fingers while he listens to Poe talk about his family.

While the stew is simmering, Poe gives him a poblano pepper to taste, when Finn asks for it, and pours a glass of milk while he waits for the spice to kick in. Jess bursts into the shop while Finn is still flailing and sweating over the chili, dripping water on their floor, and looking thoroughly disgruntled.

“Only you, Dameron,” she says, “would make me haul strawberries in this weather.”

Finn perks up at the mention of strawberries, and he helps unpacks them from Jess’ truck while Poe pays her.

“There’s some jicama in there for you, Finn,” she calls over her shoulder, punching Poe. “Get this one to put it in a salad for you one night.”

Finn emerges from the stacked delivery boxes with a strange, white-ish vegetable, and a wide grin, and Poe sighs, and nods.

“You,” Jess crows, as Finn hauls the case of strawberries off to the kitchen, “are so _whipped_. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“If I give you a slice of key lime pie will you shut up about it?” Poe grumbles, rubbing at the back of his heated neck.

“Only if there’s coffee to go with it,” Jess says cheerfully and stoops to greet BB-8 when he comes rocketing out of the kitchen.

Finn serves up large slices of key lime pie and whipped cream and pours them all coffee, before joining Jess and Poe in a booth in the front.

“You heard much about what happened on Jakku?” Jess asks, using her fork to slice a neat bite of pie and sighing happily. “I’ve run into some of the refugees on my rounds this morning. Said the First Order was looking for someone, and slaughtered a whole village out in the desert to get them. They don’t know for sure, but the rumour is there was a Resistance operative on Jakku, on a mission from General Organa herself. No one knows if they made it out.”

Finn shudders, and Poe reaches over to take his hand, squeezing gently. Finn squeezes back, hard.

“How did the refugees escape?” Poe asks, nudging Finn’s pie towards him.

“The First Order headed for the closest thing the planet has to a city, and there was some resistance. Nothing fancy, the citizens didn’t have much more than old blasters and half-scavenged ships, but it was only a small battalion of stormtroopers, and they put up enough of a fight to chase them off the planet. A couple of them rounded up a ship and got everyone they could off the planet. Hell of a story.”

She shakes her head, digging back into her pie, and Poe squeezes Finn’s hand again. Finn is staring hard at the tabletop, his brow furrowed, and when he lifts his head to speak to Jess his eyes are bright.

“The Resistance,” he says quietly. “They’re real?”

Jess looks at him, a forkful of key lime pie frozen on the way to her mouth.

“It’s just,” Finn says, slowly, “They always talked about it like it was a ghost story. Some rumor made up by traitors to the First Order to discredit them.”

“They’re real,” Jess says calmly, and she looks at Poe, something fierce and sad shining in her eyes. “Ask Poe about it sometime. His parents were involved in the original Rebellion against the Empire. He knew General Organa when he was young.”

“She was a friend of my mother’s,” Poe says, when Finn turns wide eyes on him.

“It’s real, then?” Finn asks in a whisper. “All… all of the stories?”

“All of it,” Poe confirms. “I’ll tell you about it later, whatever you want to know.”

Finn exhales, slumping in the booth against Poe’s shoulder, and Poe squeezes his hand until he relaxes entirely, sneaking a quick kiss to the crown of his head.

“You two are disgusting,” Jess announces, her fork scraping against her plate for the last bite of pie. “I’m leaving.”

“It’s pouring,” Poe says, stroking his fingers up and down Finn’s arm. “Stay awhile.”

“If I stay here much longer I may burst into song,” Jess says wryly, but she gives them both a smile and a wave before ducking back out into the downpour to complete her deliveries.

+

They don’t talk much for the rest of the afternoon. The pepían bubbles away in the kitchen, the stock creating an enticing aroma that drifts throughout the shop below and the apartment above, and gets between Poe’s bones in a warm, familiar way that reminds him of his mother, dancing with his father in their kitchen, her strong hands stirring soup and slicing vegetables and keeping him away from the flames beneath the pot.

He pulls the masa harina Jess ordered from three star systems away from the pantry, and makes dough for tortillas, smiling at the familiar way the dough flattens into circles beneath the heels of his hands.

He thinks his parents would be proud of the life he’s made for himself: the way he can make his grizzled regulars smile with a slice of something hot from the oven, the way he still makes his ma’s recipes, just the way she taught him.

He thinks they’d like the way he’d spent hours mixing shades of blue paint together until the walls matched the color of the summer sky at noon on Yavin 4. He thinks his mother would like the way he’s learned how to make a meringue so delicate it looks like clouds and tastes like heaven, and he thinks his father would like  the way he bakes gruyere into the crust of his spiced pear pie.

He knows they’d like Finn, clumsy as he is in the kitchen. They’d like that Poe has found someone so brave, so kind and so generous… so appreciative of his cooking, and so willing to try anything put in front of him.

Poe smiles as he moves around the kitchen, hefting a cast iron skillet onto the hob and avoiding a near collision with Finn, who darts from ovens to counter, trailing flour and spices, nearly knocking the cream over as he mixes biscuit dough with a single-minded concentration.

BB-8 rolls across the floor behind Finn, back and forth across the kitchen, just barely avoiding tripping each other as they go. Poe chuckles, smacks a kiss to Finn’s cheek, and turns back to the pepían.

While the chicken boils and his tortillas crisp up in hot oil in a skillet, Poe puts a saucepan on the stove, and adds his spices - guajillo and poblano chilies, cinnamon, whole peppercorns and coriander - along with the tomatoes he’s roasted in the oven until they’re blackened and ready to burst. Beside him, the chicken and vegetables bubble along, and he uses one hand to remove fresh tortillas from the skillet, and the other to stir the spices.

Finn hooks his chin over Poe’s shoulder, and presses a kiss to his temple, nosing at Poe’s jaw while he stirs and flips his tortillas.

“Can I taste it?” Finn asks, and Poe dips a spoon into the spice mixture and holds it out for him, rolling his eyes at the overly seductive smirk Finn levels in his direction as he wraps his tongue around the wooden spoon. 

Finn moans at the taste of the spices, first for show and then for real, with those wide, surprised eyes he gets when he discovers something that he likes. Poe grins at him, and hauls him in for a kiss, licking the taste of home from Finn’s mouth with careful strokes.

While the stew finishes bubbling, the spices sinking into the meat and the meat sliding off the bones, Poe takes a quick shower, and wipes down all of the surfaces in the kitchen with a damp cloth. He likes this ritual of cleaning, of putting everything to rights at the end of the day, wiping the grease and grime from the counters until they look like they did when he first bought the place, if a little more worn. 

It’s a slow day, so they close up shop early, and Poe spoons pepían into bowls, and brings over a plate of warm tortillas and rice. They eat their dinner at the windows, watching the rain.

Finn is worrying about the refugees. Poe tears his tortillas into strips and cleans his bowl with it while he watches Finn out of the corner of his eye. He knows he’s hoping that none of them are caught out in this deluge, and he loves him for worrying.

+

That night, the wind rises around the port, and Poe makes them cups of hot chocolate, spiced with a dash of ancho chili powder, like his father used to make. The rain has let up to a fine drizzle that leaves a bleak gray mist over the port, where the ships sit ghostlike in their docking bays. Lights are powering up across the port, and they paint everything a dim, hazy orange. 

Finn drinks his hot chocolate quietly, and dipping his fingers into it every once in awhile to skim the froth from the top. “Your parents were part of the Resistance?” He asks, finally.

“They were part of the Rebellion,” Poe says. “The Rebellion came first. Against the Empire, the one that Palpatine built.”

Finn flinches a little at Poe’s casual use of the Emperor’s name, as if he’s never heard it used without the honorific. “I know about Emperor Palpatine,” he says, twisting his fork in his hands and making a face at it.

“My ma flew an X-wing,” Poe says softly, taking Finn’s hand and tangling their fingers together. “She flew with Wedge Antilles and Luke Skywalker, and all the other great Rebellion pilots. She was part of the squadron that took out the first Death Star, flying back-up. Have you heard that story?” 

Finn blinks, and looks down at their hands. “Just… whispers,” he says. “They let us tell stories at night, you know, in the bunks. I think it was propaganda, because I’ve talked to Maz Kanata about things that happened a long time ago and I never seem to know the real story. The Death Star… I thought that was just a ghost story.” 

“It was real,” Poe says, trying to not let his voice betray the angry thudding of his heart. “All of it.”

“Tell me,” Finn says, urgent, and Poe squeezes his hand, and tells him.

They sit downstairs for half the night, while Poe does his best to recall his history lessons, the politics behind the Empire, and the stories his ma told him when he was younger. Finn sits, quiet and reverent, while he does his best to explain the Force, and the Jedi Order. He laughs when Poe mimics the way a perfectly tuned X-wing engine sounds when it goes online to add some color to the story about the run on the first Death Star, and he cries when Poe cups his hands together and swoops them flat over the table, an imitation Millenium Falcon, come to save the day.

BB-8 beeps in fervent accompaniment when Poe smacks his hands against the table to punctuate his story of Luke Skywalker’s perfect shot. Finn, who had until that point been grinning delightedly at his antics, freezes.

“They blew it up?” He asks. “The whole thing?”

“The whole thing,” Poe says, his grin falling from his face. “Finn, what –?”

“But all those people,” Finn says, blinking slowly. “There must have been thousands of soldiers and maintenance crew on board, and they.…”

Poe swallows past a lump in his throat. He opens his mouth to explain – if the Rebellion hadn’t struck when they did, if Luke Skywalker hadn’t made his shot – but Finn beats him to it.

“I understand,” he says, and when Poe looks at him he’s got a sad little smile on his face. “It’s war. The mathematics of war. Soldiers and maintenance crew are disposable.” He exhales, and squeezes Poe’s hand. “There’s a base right now, you know. A First Order one this time. Big as a moon, and full of soldiers. Seems like each time you blow one up, another one grows in its place.”

Poe cups his hands around Finn’s sweet, sad smile, and kisses him thoroughly. Finn smiles at him when he pulls back, a real smile this time.

“Tell me the rest of it,” he says. “Tell me about fighting for freedom.”

And Poe does.

+

The day after it rains the sky is a brilliant blue, tinged green around the horizon, and scrubbed clean and dry. They make fiddly pastries, the kind you can’t make when there’s too much moisture in the air, and fill the display case with them, tempting regulars and new customers alike.

When it quiets down in the late afternoon, Finn slings Poe’s old jacket over his shoulders and takes a handful of canvas bags and BB-8 to the market.

It always takes hours for Finn to come back from the market because he knows each of the vendors personally, and he likes to stop and talk and ask them about their produce and their families.

The light is fading from the sky and Poe is drinking a last cup of coffee, and wondering if there will be enough leftovers for dinner when the door to the shop bangs open and Finn, BB-8, and the girl from the refugee ship tumble inside.

“Poe!” Finn says, grinning. His nose is bleeding, and there’s blood in his teeth. “This is Rey. She hit me in the face. For a good reason!” He adds hastily, after seeing the look on Poe’s face. “I tried to interfere in a fight she was having.”

“I _told_ you I didn’t need your help,” Rey snaps. There’s a bruise on the underside of her jaw, blooming purple down her throat, and she’s clutching her staff with white-knuckled fingers.

“This is Poe,” Finn says, cheerfully. He tilts his head up and back when Poe goes to him, and lets Poe wipe the blood gently from his face with the damp towel that BB-8 brings. Rey stands beside them, her eyes sliding between the exit and Poe’s fingers on Finn’s jaw.

The tension she’s radiating fades slightly when Poe brushes a kiss over Finn’s bruised lips and cuffs him gently on the back of the head.

“Do I need to beat someone up for you?” He asks, and Finn shakes his head.

“Rey took care of it,” he says, and grins widely at her. She frowns at both of them, and then at BB-8, who is nuzzling gently against her shins.

“Can I get you some ice for that bruise?” Poe asks.

She shakes her head stiffly, her eyes jumping towards the exit again.

“What about something to eat?” He tries, more gently this time. “Finn?”

“I’m starving,” Finn says, peeling Poe’s jacket from his shoulders and offering it to Rey, who frowns at it until he shrugs and places it on top of BB-8, laughing and giving chase when the droid beeps loudly and begins to roll blindly away towards the wall.

Poe watches them while he tips the leftover pepían into a pot. BB-8 manages to dislodge his jacket and chases Finn around the shop for a handful of minutes, beeping a series of increasingly rude tirades that startle a laugh out of Rey.

BB-8 beeps triumphantly when Finn trips against the edge of the counter, and scoops the jacket from the floor, bringing it over to Poe, who takes it from the droid and hangs it with his aprons in the kitchen. He pours the last of the pot of coffee into mugs and places them on a tray, with milk and sugar, and three helpings of pepían and rice, navigating carefully back into the shop, where Rey is helping Finn to his feet, still stiff and wary.

“You should join us for dinner,” Poe says, placing the tray on a table. “There’s plenty to go around, and we don’t mind sharing.”

At his side, Finn slides easily into a booth, and smiles at Rey until she tentatively leans her staff against a nearby table and sits opposite him, her eyes flickering over the coffee and food, then back up to Poe, still wary.

“I’m Poe,” he says, wiping a hand on the towel tucked into his belt, and offering it to her, “Poe Dameron.”

She has a strong handshake and calloused palms, and she curls her fingers into a fist when she draws her hand away. “I’m Rey,” she says. “This is your shop?”

“It’s both of ours.” Poe says. “Are you hungry?” He pushes a plate across the table and she eyes it cautiously, and then folds her hands in her lap.

“I can’t pay you,” she says.

“It’s on the house,” Poe says, “as a thanks for saving this one’s ass.” He claps a hand on Finn’s shoulder and nudges the plate a little closer. She’s stopped checking the exits, but there’s something in the way she’s sitting that means she’s still poised for flight.  

“No, thank you.”

“Most of the spices are from half a galaxy away,” Finn says, dipping his own spoon into the flavorful stew. “You should try it, it’s the most incredible thing you’ll ever eat.”

Rey watches him take a large bite and grimaces when he smiles at her with his mouth full. She looks down at the plate, and back up at Poe, her eyebrows knotted.

He nods at her, and picks up his own spoon. “It’s on the house,” he says. “No strings attached.”

Slowly, Rey unfolds her hands and pulls the plate closer to her. Her fingers shake a little bit as she does so, but they pretend not to notice. Finn hands her a spoon with a flourish, and Poe hides his smile behind his coffee mug when her eyes widen at the taste.

“It’s better than ration packs, huh?” Finn says, grinning at her and pushing the rice in her direction. “Try it with this. It’s a tortilla. You fill it with rice, see, and then scoop up the stew. Like this.” He demonstrates, and Rey studies his fingers and mimics his movements.

“I’ve never heard of a food like this before,” she says, when her bowl is nearly empty. 

“It’s an old recipe from across the galaxy,” Poe says. “My ma used to make it, and my abuela made it for her, and my bisabuela made it for her. All the way back.”

Rey looks at him, her eyes tracking quickly across his face. It’s a surprisingly penetrating gaze, and she nods after a moment, and finishes her stew.

“It’s a good recipe,” she says. “Thank you.”

Finn clears their plates when they’re done eating, and disappears into the kitchen for slices of strawberry rhubarb pie. Rey, who was casting glances at her staff, and the bag she’d set down at her feet, freezes, and looks from Finn to Poe.

“You can’t leave without having dessert,” Poe says. “The pie’s the best part.”

“Poe makes the best goddamned rhubarb pie this side of the galaxy,” Finn says, setting the plates down. “Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.”

Rey’s reluctance fades quicker than it did with the pepían, and she tastes her pie carefully, then hums in appreciation  and digs in.

They’re on their second helpings of pie when the door swings open again, this time admitting Maz Kanata, the diminutive owner of the local pub, and Finn’s favorite regular. He vaults out of the booth to hold the door for her, and offers his arm to lead her gallantly to the counter, which he ducks behind to brew her a pot of Darjeeling and a cut a delicate slice of Poe’s finest Victoria sponge.

Rey watches them as she finishes her own dessert, and Poe watches her.

“Did you grow up on Jakku?” He asks as she’s chasing the last pieces of rhubarb around her plate.

“No,” she says, and doesn’t offer any other information.

“Are you happy to be off it?”

She hesitates, tapping her fork against her plate. “I think so,” she says, finally, setting her fork down.

“Where will you go next?” Poe asks, as gently as he can manage.

“No idea,” Rey says, pursing her lips. “I was waiting for someone, on Jakku, but I don’t know if they’ll come back for me. Not after what happened.”

The massacre, Poe remembers, and he grips the table for support, wondering what he can offer, what she might need.

“Were you there?” He asks, and Rey looks away.

“Close enough.”

“Can you get in touch with them?”

“No.”

“Do you have anywhere to go?” She looks away, tapping her fingers neatly against the tabletop, stiff with tension once more. “You’re welcome to stay here,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. He has a feeling she won’t react well to pity. “We’ve got a spare room.”

Rey raises her eyebrows at him, unconvinced.

“You could work for room and board, like Finn does.” Poe says, and then corrects himself. “Well. Like he did. It seemed weird to pay him when we started…” He waves his hands awkwardly, and colors at Rey’s inquisitive look. He glances over at Finn, whispering with Maz over the counter, and flushes harder.

“I wrote him into the lease,” he says. “We co-own the place now. And you don’t have to work if you don’t want, but if you’re worried about paying for the room, we can, you know. We can always use a spare pair of hands.”

Rey studies his face for a moment, and he does his best to look non-threatening.

“No,” she says finally, and then, carefully, “thank you.”

+ 

It’s nearly a month before Poe speaks Rey again. He catches glimpses of her out of the windows, and sees her through the crowds sometimes when he goes to the market. She always acknowledges him briefly, and then disappears before he can catch up with her.

In the rest of the port, ships come and go, taking some of the refugees from Jakku with them, while others take on jobs in the port and at the market. At Maz Kanata’s, Poe’s old friend Snap Wexley starts a bar brawl with a smuggler with a thick accent, and he, Karé Kun, and Iolo Arana are banned for a week. Finn cuts his finger slicing plums, and ruins a souffle, and Poe worries, and hopes that Rey has somewhere to sleep that is safe and dry.

A month after they first met her, she walks in at the tail-end of the morning rush. There’s a new bruise on her temple, and one on her arm, like she was grabbed roughly, or pushed aside, and Poe grits his teeth at the sight of it.

“Do you still have that room?” She asks, laying a small handful of coins on the counter. “I have this, and I’ll work for room and board, like you said.”

He smiles at her, and unties his apron from his neck. “Keep your money,” he tells her. “We’ll put you on payroll. Finn? Can you watch the counter for a minute?” 

Finn takes the apron from him and beams wildly at Rey, pulling the apron over his head eagerly.

Rey follows him Poe into the kitchen, and he shows her the ovens, and the iceboxes, the pantry, and the racks where the dough for the next day’s bread is already rising. She takes it all in with sharp eyes that dart around the small, warm space, and settle on the fruit in cool storage.

“We’re expecting a delivery next week,” Poe tells her, “mangoes and limes and peaches. They have to be shipped from a planet a couple star systems away that has the right kind of atmosphere, but it’s worth it for the taste. Beats synthetic any day. You hungry?”

Rey shrugs, but her eyes keep straying back to fruit, and Poe has to hide his grin.

“Let me show you where you’ll be staying,” he says, “and then we’ll have something to eat.”

The spare room has been empty since that morning Finn kissed him, but the bed is made, the sheets pulled military tight, and Rey looks it over carefully, placing the battered rucksack she’s been clutching on the floor. The room is plain, and Poe makes a note to bring in some of the colorful blankets he keeps in his room but never uses, to liven the place up a little.

At the moment, the only decoration is an old holo he’d tacked to one wall, an image of the Massassi Temple on Yavin 4, treetops marching away behind it in an unending swathe of green. Rey places her staff against the wall, and hesitates by the photograph, reaching up to tap her fingers against it, distorting the image slightly.

Poe looks away when she turns back to him, and pretends he hasn’t seen. Her wrists are bird-thin, the skin on their underside nearly translucent, and he resolves to make sure that she never wants for food, not while she’s staying with them.

Maz Kanata is back when they get downstairs, and Finn is cheerfully talking her ear off, plying her with sponge cake and coffee with a splash of the Corellian whiskey Poe keeps tucked behind the counter. Poe rolls his eyes at them, and swings his hips a little when Maz whistles at him.

In the kitchen he slices the last of the watermelon and cleans a handful of cherries, handing them to Rey to eat while they make lunch. 

She helps him fill a stock pot with water, and then watches bemusedly while he hums and drops in a handful of vegetables, the carcass from a curry they’d eaten a few days ago, and a dash of this and that from the spice cabinet. She picks up the spice jars he tosses back onto the counter once he’s done with them, opening and sniffing each carefully.

Finn joins them after the soup’s been simmering for close to an hour, sticks his head in the steam rising from the pot and fishes out a chunk of carrot to taste. He pouts at Poe when he burns his mouth, and Poe curls a hand around the back of Finn’s head and pulls him close to kiss him.

Rey is watching them when they pull apart, a jar of aleppo pepper in one hand. There’s nothing but simple curiosity in her eyes, and she smiles when Poe blushes and smacks Finn’s hand with his ladle when he reaches back in for a sprig of wilted thyme.

+

Rey is an earlier riser than Finn, and the morning after she moves into Poe’s spare room he finds her in the kitchen at dawn, speaking softly to BB-8, and sweeping the floor. She jumps a little when she sees him in the doorway, and then meets his gaze evenly.

“You really don’t need to do this,” Poe tells her, but she just shrugs, and watches him go through his morning routine. By the third morning, she has the routine down, and hauls flour and kneads dough like she’s been doing it for years.

During the day she helps Finn clear tables, and tinkers with BB-8 whenever he rolls through a slick of spilled caramel and his servo-grip jams. On her fifth day, she sits on the front counter and watches Poe clean the espresso machine, and the next evening, she takes over the task and does it far more quickly and efficiently than he ever has.

By the end of the week, she’s made herself indispensable, and he enjoys the quiet mornings they spend punching dough into shape before Finn stumbles down the stairs for coffee and breakfast.

Halfway through her second week with them, Rey is chopping strawberries with Finn when Jess bangs through the back door with a delivery of fruit, sugar, and extra fine flours, talking a mile a minute about the Keshiri who couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

“... so I said he could get someone else to deliver his shef’na fruit, I wasn’t doing it anymore, and he told me to shove my shef’na fruit where the sun don’t shine, so _I_ told him... “ Jess trails off at the bemused look on Poe’s face, and turns around to see that there’s an addition to her normal audience.

“Oh, sweet kriff,” she says. “You’ve adopted another one.”

Finn laughs, that sweet giggle he always seems to be collapsing into around Jess. It had taken Poe and Jess a while to teach Finn that it was alright to laugh at the things he found funny, as loudly and as long as he wanted, and once Finn started, it was hard to get him to stop.

“I’m Rey,” Rey says, stepping forward and extending a hand. Jess takes a moment to look her over, focusing momentarily on the berry stains on her palms, before shaking Rey’s hand heartily.

“Jess. Jessika Pava,” she says. “Sorry you landed with these two idiots.”

“They’ve been good to me,” Rey says, wrinkling her nose, and Jess nods sagely.

“Oh sure,” she says, “they’re great, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not idiots.”

“Take your slander and get out of my pie shop,” Poe says, bumping Jess gently out of the way to inspect the peaches she’s brought them. Grown in the sunny climes of the Rolion sector, a few days travel by lightspeed away, they cost an arm and a leg but are gorgeous, plump fruits, never sour and great in cobbler. Jess grumbles, but she unloads them gently before digging in a sack for a perfectly ripe tomato, which she hands carefully to Finn.

He rolls the fruit in his palm, closing strong fingers around its fragile skin, before holding it out to Rey for inspection. She take it from him gingerly and sniffs it, then holds it out to Poe, who hides a grin as he reaches for a knife and slices the tomato in half.

He cuts thick slices for everyone, and laughs as Finn puts a whole slice in his mouth in one go, and Rey licks at hers a little bit, before taking a small bite.

“She from Jakku?” Jess asks, as she helps Poe haul the peaches back to the coolers, leaving Finn and Rey to enjoy their tomato with a dash of oil and salt.

“She came in with the refugee ship,” Poe says quietly. “Said she was waiting for someone planetside, but....” He shrugs, hefting the final crate of fruit into his overstuffed coolers. “She hasn’t said much about herself.”

“You sure know how to pick ‘em,” Jess murmurs, glancing back out to the front of the shop, where Finn is trying to put tomato seeds in Rey’s hair, and Rey is fending him off with one hand and an exasperated glare.

“I don’t know,” Poe says, picking up the empty crates. “I think I do alright.”

Jess rolls her eyes at him and pulls Rey away from Finn, sitting her down at the counter with a cup of coffee and a slew of embarrassing stories. They’re laughing wildly within just a few minutes, and Poe shakes his head at them, which only seems to make things worse. He wonders if he should intervene to preserve what dignity he has left, but is struck by the memory of Jess telling Finn jokes, and explaining each carefully, until they made him laugh, and he lets them be.

Jess stays for dinner, and Poe and Finn put together a platter of messy fajitas. Rey, they’ve discovered, likes her food as spicy as she can get it, and the meal quickly descends into a game of one-upmanship, as they drizzle Poe’s hottest salsas on their food. It ends with Rey crunching calmly into a habanero, while Poe sweats and admits defeat.

Finn kisses him at the table to make up for it, and Jess throws an entire handful of rice at them. Most of it ends up down Finn’s shirt and he pulls it off to clean the dishes shirtless, preening at Jess’ catcalls, and trying to wrestle Poe out of his own shirt.

Finn is so full of life it knocks Poe backwards sometimes. When he’s happy, it feels like he expands to fill every nook and cranny of the pie shop with his laughter and bright smiles. He’s so endlessly different from the battered soldier who stumbled into Poe’s shop and questioned whether Poe was really letting him stay, and Poe is so proud of him it hurts to breathe.

Jess finds him at the end of the night, joining him at the counter for a nightcap while Rey and Finn finish the dishes and filch peaches from the coolers. “You do alright, Poe Dameron,” she says, wrapping a fond arm around his waist. “You do alright.”

+

A month after Rey arrives on their moon, a junky little ship limps into port without much fanfare. Poe is showing Finn how to knead sourdough and watching Rey wipe down tables out front with quick, efficient strokes when the bell over the door jingles, and Rey knocks over a chair.

There’s an old man and a Wookiee in the doorway to their pie-shop, and Poe’s heart leaps into his throat at the sight of a face he’d forgotten was familiar. He steps unsteadily away from Finn, his hands thick with bread dough, but Rey beats him to the door, stepping over the chair towards the unlikely pair in the doorway.

“Han? Han Solo?” She says, and the Wookiee roars. Finn drops a mixing bowl and hurries after Poe.

“Rey?” Solo says, and takes a hesitant step towards her. “When we heard about Jakku…” he starts, and catches a glimpse of Poe coming in from the kitchen, wiping his hands clean on his apron and standing tall. “Poe Dameron?” Han says, his eyes going even wider. “Shara’s boy?”

The Wookiee growls plaintively, and Poe freezes, staring at Rey, who stares right back. In the stunned silence, Finn sticks his head over Poe’s shoulder.

“Hi!” He says. “I’m Finn.”

Rey opens her mouth to confront Poe, but is distracted by the Wookiee – Chewbacca, Poe remembers, distantly – who steps forward and throws two very long arms around her. Finn makes an alarmed noise, and Poe has to grab his shoulder to keep him from rushing over to rescue Rey from the Wookiee’s embrace.

“It’s okay,” Poe murmurs, tightening his hold on Finn’s shoulder as Han takes one step forward and then another, tapping on Chewie’s arm to get him to relinquish Rey so that he can fold her into a hug. “It’s okay, I know them. We know them.”

In front of them, Rey’s mouth crumples, and she buries her face in the soft looking leather of Han’s jacket, shaking badly enough that Poe can see it from where he stands. Han rubs her back in firm, calming strokes, and Poe has to look away from the set of his mouth, and the deep, sad look in his eyes.

“Why are you here?” Rey asks, her voice muffled by Han’s jacket. “How did you know to look for me here? I lost my comm, I didn’t think that anyone would be coming back for me.”

Han closes his eyes, looking older and more tired than Poe has ever seen him.

Han had been Poe’s hero: a great pilot, a rogue, the reason he’d begged his parents for a leather jacket when he was seven, and to teach him to fly the year after. He looks worn now, like his years of traversing the galaxy and cheating death have finally caught up with him. Poe’s in infrequent touch with some old friends who’ve joined the Resistance, and he vaguely remembers that they’d written about little Ben Solo, who wasn’t so little anymore, and who was no longer his father’s son. If he ever had been.

“I was running,” Han says, finally, and Rey pulls back far enough to look him in the eye, wiping at her own. “I was running from everything, but after we heard about what happened on Jakku, I couldn’t... “ He shakes his head quickly, and manages a smile. “Leia got some intel from a Bothan spy that a ship of refugees had docked on this moon. I thought it might be worth checking out.”

“You came back for me,” Rey says wonderingly, and Finn makes a small, approving sound.

Han lets her go, and pulls his best frown over his smile. “Yeah kid,” he says, “don’t get cocky.”

Rey hiccups, and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath. Han’s attention shifts from her to Poe, who stiffens under the scrutiny.

“Pie!” He says, loudly enough that Finn jumps. “The triple-berry just came out of the oven, let me get you a slice. Rey, could you give me a hand?”

Finn gives him a wide-eyed look as Poe pulls Rey into the kitchen, but gamely ushers Han and Chewbacca to a table, starting up a stream of chatter.

“How the hell do you know Han Solo?” Poe hisses, banging open an oven. In the shop, there’s the sounds of a small scuffle, a Wookiee expletive and Finn’s nervous laughter. Poe shakes his head and pushes the coffee pot into Rey’s hands, diving for plates, utensils, and pie.

“I’m the best damn pilot in the Resistance,” Rey hisses back, her hands shaking slightly as she pours coffee for everyone. “General Organa sent me to Jakku on a classified mission.”

Poe stares at her, and then swears when he burns his hand against the oven. “Why the hell didn’t you _say_ anything!”

“I lost my comm!” Rey snaps. “The Resistance communicates on several heavily coded frequencies, I had no way of getting in touch with them! I thought that was it, I thought it was all over.”

“This is a _spaceport_ ,” Poe whispers back, sliding haphazardly cut slices of pie onto plates. “You could have gotten a ride back to their base, instead of staying here!”

“I _like_ it here!” Rey snaps, and they both freeze. “This is the first place that’s felt like home in a long time.” She sighs, and presses her hands against her eyes again. “The Resistance is constantly on the move. They would have been at a new base, and without my comm, I had no way of getting in touch with them to find out where they had settled.”

Poe opens and closes his mouth and then swallows, with some difficulty. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I just. I thought I left this part of my life behind.”

“Which part?” Rey asks, and he waves a hand, scooping the plates into his hand.

“The part where I sit down and eat pie with legends,” he mumbles, and she gives him a small smile.

“It was nice to not be on the brink of war,” she murmurs. “It feels a lot safer here than anywhere the Resistance ever sent me.”

“You can stay here as long as you want,” Poe says. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Rey says, giving him a half-hearted smile. “I know. I’m not going to, but it’s nice to know I could.”

+

Chewbacca likes Poe’s triple-berry pie. He eats four slices, and Poe brings out a lemon meringue pie and a fork, when it seems like he’s still hungry.

Han eyes the lemon meringue, and takes a bite before Chewie has a chance to eat it all. He chews thoughtfully, and then lays down his fork with studied care.

“Just like Shara’s,” he says, soft enough that only Poe can hear.

Poe looks at him and swallows, his throat crowded with emotion. At his side, Finn seems to sense his distress, and wraps a warm hand around Poe’s wrist, squeezing gently.

Han raises his eyebrows, his attention caught by the casual gesture, and Poe takes Finn’s hand deliberately, meeting Han’s eyes while his heart thunders in his chest.

“It’s good,” Han says, quietly. “You look happy here.”

Poe squeezes Finn’s hand, hard. “I am.”

“Good,” Han says, and looks ready to say more when his comm buzzes on his hip. “Huh,” he says, and activates it, grinning crookedly at the screen.

“Success, General,” he says, turning the holo towards Rey. “I found her.”  

There’s a rush of excited chatter that makes Rey’s eyes shine, and she leans forward, speaking quickly and authoritatively to the holo. It’s General Organa, Poe recognizes her eyes and her voice, even distorted by distance over the holo.

“Leia,” Han interjects, crooking a finger at Poe, “you’ll never guess who I ran into.” When he hesitates, Chewie plants a paw on Poe’s face and pushes until he’s in the holo-frame, looking directly at General Organa. He had an all-encompassing crush on her when he was sixteen, and his cheeks heat embarrassingly quickly when she smiles at him.

“Poe Dameron,” she says, and he straightens his spine. “I’m glad to hear you’ve been taking care of Rey.”

Poe, still flushing, glances at Rey, who rolls her eyes. “It’s more like she’s been taking care of me, ma’am,” he says.

Han and Chewie leave once the stars come out, and Poe watches them walk back to the Falcon before joining Finn in their bedroom. Rey goes with them, peppering Han with questions about the Falcon’s notoriously faulty hyperdrive, and the apartment feels very still when they go up to bed.

In their bedroom, they undress quietly in the starlight and Finn loops his arms around Poe’s waist, pressing his nose against the knot of bone at the top of Poe’s spine and breathing carefully.

“All the stories are real,” Poe hears him murmur, and he reaches back to squeeze Finn’s hip, and slips into sleep.

+

Jess and Chewie get along like a podracer on fire, which was only to be expected. Han and Chewie split their time between tinkering on the Falcon; charming Maz Kanata, who takes an immediate shine to the Wookiee; and drinking black coffee at the pie shop.

Han’s reluctant at first, but steady prodding from Finn entices him to open up, and he tells them long, intricate stories about the scrapes he and Chewie have gotten themselves into and out of, most of them involving stolen goods, double-crossed double crosses, and death-defying escapes.

It’s strange to have him on their moon. Once, Poe turned around from the oven too quickly and mistook Han was his father, home from work and leaning against the worn counter, passing the time with anyone who stopped to talk to him.

Han doesn’t talk about Ben, and Poe doesn’t ask.

At night, after they’ve eaten, Rey and Han clear the table and spend hours sketching flight paths that make Poe’s fingers itch for a ship to fly in formation. He goes to Finn when he gets too restless, and holds him tight, breathing until the ground feels steady beneath his feet once more.

No one mentions it, but they all know Rey is going to leave when Han and Chewie do. She’s a soldier, a commander without her squadron, and Poe can’t believe he didn’t see it sooner.

Most mornings, after the majority of the baking is done, and the morning rush has quieted, Poe does inventory, and draws up a list of things he needs Jess to ship to their little spaceport. This morning, he finishes early, and collects an armful of figs, his mind full of a fig and goat cheese tart that he vaguely remembers his mother making.

The pie shop is hushed and empty, bright with sunlight, and Rey and Finn are standing at the counter.

“I’ll go with you,” Finn is saying, and Poe’s heart clenches as he pauses in the doorway. Finn had whispered the same thing to him the night before, that he’d go the end of the universe if it meant keeping Rey safe, even though he knew she could take care of herself.

“No, Finn,” Rey says, touching Finn’s cheekbone with slim, strong fingers. “You’re needed here.”

“I’m not scared,” Finn says, “Well, I am a little, but if you wanted me to, I’d come with you....”

“And leave Poe?” Rey asks, and Finn falters. “He needs you, Finn. You need each other. And I need you both to be here when I get back. I need this to be a home I can come back to. _Please_.” She says, her voice breaking, and Finn nods heavily.

Rey reaches out with her other hand, cupping Finn’s face, and then leans in impulsively, pressing a messy kiss to his mouth. She leans back half a second later, and Poe watches, smiling slightly, as they stare at each other.

Rey bolts first, jumping over BB-8 who squeals in delight as she crashes through the door and disappears into the portside crowds. Finn stares, his fingertips grazing his lips, and then follows, tripping over BB-8 as he goes, who beeps rudely at him, and hoots at Poe, who steps out of the doorway and ducks down to smooth a hand over the droid.

He places his figs on the counter, watching Finn pelt through the crowds until he disappears behind a market stall, and smiles at BB-8 when he makes a tremendously rude noise at his ankles.

“I know they were kissing, BB-8,” Poe says, “I saw them.” He ducks back into the kitchen and heaves a bag of flour onto the work counter. BB-8 follows, beeping loudly. “No, I’m not angry.”

He finds eggs in the fridge, still thinking vaguely about his tart, and smiling at BB-8’s affronted beeps, and sets to work.

Finn gets back first. He looks tired, but he returns Poe’s smile with a soft kiss, and warm arms around his waist.

“Rey kissed me,” he confesses softly, reaching around Poe’s shoulders to pick up a sliced fig.

“I don’t blame her,” Poe says, and nips at Finn’s mouth when he turns to him.

“You’re not angry?” Finn asks, warily. “I think you’re supposed to be angry.”

“I trust you,” Poe says, shrugging.

“I _love_ you,” Finn counters, and laughs when Poe chokes on his breath in response.

“Are you serious?” He asks, tears pricking his eyes. It’s a ridiculous reaction, but he can’t help himself.

“I’m not sure that’s how you’re supposed to respond,” Finn says, a smile gleaming at the corners of his eyes.

“I love you, too.” Poe says, and shakes his head when Finn beams at him, and draws him into an enthusiastic kiss that knocks their teeth together painfully.

“What are you making?” Finn asks, when they’ve managed to pull themselves apart, scrutinizing the cheese, herbs, and dough Poe has scattered across the work surface.

“Something my ma used to make,” Poe says. “I can’t quite remember how it went, so I’m making it up as I go along.” He huffs out a short laugh, rescuing his cheese knife from one end of the counter. “That’s a pretty good metaphor for my life, actually.”

The tart doesn’t taste the way his mother’s did, but it’s good all the same. The cheese he’s used makes it taste smoky, and the ripe figs make it sweet, and the grin on Finn’s face as he eats a second helping makes it one of the best things he’s eaten in awhile.

Finn goes up to bed early, with a lingering kiss, and a teasing grope. Humming to himself, Poe wipes down the surfaces in the kitchen, folds butter into dough for the next morning’s pastries, moves everything that’s left over in the display case to the coolers, and makes himself a cup of tea.

It’s nearing midnight when Rey lets herself into the pie-shop, and Poe jerks awake from where he’d dozed off against the counter.

“What are you doing up?” She whispers as he rolls his neck from side to side to ease a cramp.

“Wanted to make sure you were okay,” he whispers back. “Have you eaten?”

She bites her lip, and he pushes himself upright, retrieving a plate with the last of the fig tart on it from the oven where he’d left it to keep warm. Rey sits down on a stool at the counter, and fiddles nervously with her fork for a handful of long minutes.

“I kissed Finn,” she blurts, finally, and tucks her arms around her ribs, elbows sticking out sharply.

“I know,” Poe says evenly. “I saw you.”

Her head whips up and she stares at him, mouth dropping open in surprise.

“It’s okay,” he says, with a grin, stealing a chunk of fig from her plate. “I struggle to keep my hands off him, too.”  

Rey makes a face at him, and starts what sounds like several sentences at once, that resolve into: “I didn’t like it.”

Poe raises an eyebrow. “Now that I may have to take offense to.” He crosses his arms. “Finn is an excellent kisser. I taught him myself.”

Rey frowns at him, and says, softer this time: “I didn’t like it.”

“It’s okay that you didn’t like it,” Poe says, pushing his tea cup around and around its saucer. “Maybe it’s because it was the wrong person. Or maybe it’s because Finn is a man. Or maybe kissing a thing you just don’t like. Any one of those options are okay.” He rubs a hand through his hair. Rey is still frowning at him. There’s something playing around the corners of her mouth, and he’s not sure if it’s a smile or a sob.

“Finn offered to come with me when Han and I leave,” she says, twisting her hands together.

“Do you want him to come with you?” Poe asks, speaking through the clench in his chest. He’s the only one among them who grew up with the freedom to make his own choices, and he’ll be damned if he makes hers for her.

“I’m going after Luke Skywalker.” She says. “No one’s seen him in close to a decade, did you know that?” He shakes his head, numbly. “That’s what I was on Jakku for. I was looking for a piece of a map that would lead to where he’s hidden himself away. And I found it, and now all I have to do is fly across the galaxy to find him and bring him back so Leia can yell at him, and he can help us fight the First Order, and…” She exhales noisily, her breath catching the fine hairs around her face and blowing them away. 

“I have to do this on my own,” Rey says, something quiet and fierce lacing the words. “I have to find out what it is about my blood that makes me special. And I could never take Finn away from you,” she says, leaning gently into Poe. “He’d pine.”

“ _I’d_ pine,” Poe says. “I’d be in pieces, and Jess would not be sympathetic.”

“Yes she would,” Rey says, and Poe smiles at her until she grins back.

“Yeah,” he says. “She would.”

+ 

The next day Finn takes Chewie and Rey to the market, and Han wanders into the pie shop on his own, his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“Hey, kid,” he begins, a little awkward.

Poe hasn’t been ‘kid’ for a decade and a half, but it’s hard to protest when it’s Han Solo. He wonders if Han sees his son in Poe. Poe spent more time with Leia as a child, because she was close friends with his ma, but he remembers that Han and his father were drinking buddies, and nearly always in trouble.

“You, uh, you want to see the Falcon?” Han asks. “I’ve made some modifications.”

Poe remembers the Falcon, too. He remembers watching her flying in and out of the base he grew up in on Yavin 4, belly just brushing the tree-tops as she came in to land, and the way his mother would stop whatever she was doing, shade her eyes from the sun and watch her go. She’d laugh when the blue glow of the taillights were out of sight, and shake her head. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I would.”

Poe’s never been inside the ship, but he likes it as soon as he steps in. Everything is a little battered: the floors are scuffed and when they duck into the cockpit it looks like things are held together with spit and a prayer. Poe loves it. He settles himself into the co-pilot seat, reverently touches some of the switches on the dashboard in front of him.

“So,” Han says, after they’ve sat in silence for a while, watching the buzzing activity of the docks beneath them – ships coming in and taking off, people loading or unloading cargo, the marketplace a familiar bustle of activity on the fringes of it all. He can just about see the awning of his shop from here, the faded green cloth. “How’d you end up here?” Han asks, still not quite looking at Poe, and Poe shrugs.

“The guy who owned the shop before me was looking to sell and move on,” he says. “I wanted the shop, so I sold my ship and stayed here.”

“Can’t imagine any son of Shara Bey’s selling his ship,” Han says lightly, and he looks back at Poe when Poe turns to him.

“This is something she always wanted,” Poe says. “She loved to fly, but she also loved to cook for people. She always dreamed of settling somewhere away from the fight, opening up a little place where she could bake and make people happy.”

Han smiles at that, and leans back in the pilot’s seat. “We used to be so jealous of Kes,” he says. “Shara would make these incredible desserts – she’d always share, but Kes always got the biggest slice of cake, the cookie with the most chocolate in it.” He shakes his head, and laughs along with Poe. “Leia’s an incredible woman, but she was never much of a cook.”

Poe opens his mouth, wondering if this is the moment when he asks about Ben, but he closes it when he sees the sad, far-off look in Han’s eyes.

“You got something good here,” Han says, after another minute of silence. He glances out of the cockpit window, down at the bustling spaceport, and then up at the sky. “The shop, and that young man of yours.”

Poe bites his lip and looks away when Han trails off. “He was First Order,” Poe admits quietly. “He defected and found his way here. He didn’t have anywhere to go, so I took him in.”

“You love him?” Han asks, and Poe nods, losing the fight against the smile that pulls at the corner of his lips.

“Yeah,” he says hoarsely, and Han nods.

“Good,” he says, “that’s good.” There’s another moment of silence, and then Han reaches up to the switches set in the roof of the cockpit and flips a handful of them, one after the other in an easy rhythm. Something deep in the ship hums, and Poe grins. At his side, Han raises an eyebrow, and pats the dashboard. “You want to take her up?”

Poe nods, and Han leans back, gesturing for him to go ahead. Poe flips another handful of toggle switches, slowly at first, and then faster, the ship coming to life beneath his hands. He scans the displays, pulls in a breath, and takes her up.

The ride is gentler than he would have expected, the whole ship alive beneath his hands. In the seat beside him, Han crosses his arms and smiles, and Poe puts his hands on the thrusters, and opens her up.

The ship sings beneath his fingers, and shoots off into the sky.

+

Han Solo has been on their moon for two weeks when TIE fighters come screaming through the sky above their space port.

Poe’s blood runs cold at the terrible whine of their engines, and he looks wildly around for Finn, who Rey is herding into the relative safety of the kitchen, wielding a kitchen knife and a rolling pin.

At the front of the shop, Chewie roars, and Han bellows: “Kriffing trackers on the kriffing ship! I thought you disabled them!” Chewie shows his teeth, and Han grimaces, unholstering his blaster in a fluid, dangerous motion.

“How many are there?” Poe shouts, cupping a hand around Finn’s shoulder as he runs for the pantry. He sweeps an armful of small glass bottles out of the way, and punches at the back of the spice cabinet until the compartment he built there years ago springs open and he can reach in for his father’s dusty blaster. Across the kitchen, Finn is holding a steak knife and Rey’s hand, and Poe is not going to let them take him.

“Only half a dozen,” Han calls, over a muffled explosion from farther down the docking bays. Outside, the port is in chaos - a dozen species shouting and running: for ships or blasters or cover. There’s another explosion, closer this time, and Chewie roars.

“Half a dozen,” Finn repeats, unsteadily. He’s sweating, but he joins Han at the front of the shop, watching the TIE fighters as they careen above the port. “These guys are just scouts: they’re flying in a recon formation.”

“Does that mean there’s a Destroyer nearby?” Poe asks, and Finn shakes his head, putting down his knife so he can hold Poe’s hand.

“No, there’d be a lot more ships if there was. This is a scout group, they must have got the same intel Han did, about the refugee ship from Jakku. If they get out of the system and report back, the Destroyer will be here in a day or two.”

“So we don’t let them make their report,” Rey says. She’s set down the knife and rolling pin and is twirling a small blaster between her fingers, her bright eyes tracking the TIE fighters.

“What happens if all of those TIE fighters miss their rendezvous with the Destroyer?” Poe asks, and Finn shrugs 

“They’ll send more ships to investigate. Bigger ones, with more firepower.”

“Unless they have something else to chase.” Han says. “We have to get the Falcon off this moon.”

“Even the Millenium Falcon won’t be able to outrun a half-dozen TIE fighters, and a Star Destroyer,” Rey snaps, “and that bloody compressor is still broken, you won’t last half an hour in hyperspace.” 

“Chewie and me can fix it,” Han protests, but Rey shakes her head, tapping her fingers rapidly against the table.

“They’ll bring you down long before you were able to,” she says.

There’s another muffled blast, near enough to shake the walls of the shop. Poe’s mind floods with images of the blue walls of the pie shop split open, the ovens he’d saved for a year to purchase mangled, their cosy home upstairs ravaged… He blinks, and shakes his head to clear it. 

“Well, what do you recommend, then?” Han is asking Rey, whose eyes are flashing dangerously. 

“We engage them,” she says, coolly, her rapid fingers the only hint of her distress. “There are plenty of capable pilots in this port. We scramble a group of them, and we mount a defense. They won’t be expecting an organized resistance.” 

“You want to engage the First Order to defend this moon,” Han says flatly. He gestures out of the window, at the remains of the market, the fleeing civilians, the ramshackle cluster of buildings that are almost as familiar to Poe as the tree tops on Yavin 4. “Half of the pilots you’re talking about can’t stand each other.” 

“People _live_ here, Han,” Rey says. “Those same pilots keep coming back to this moon because they love it here. Because it’s their home. We can’t let them destroy this moon because they’re looking for us.”

“So let me and Chewie lead them away from the port!” Han argues, and Rey shakes her head, her hair flying.  
  
“They’ll blast you out of the air before you break atmo,” she says, “I _told_ you, the compressor is still broken, and you’ll never be able to outrun six of them. General Organa would never forgive me if I let you do something so catastrophically stupid.” 

That, at least, gets Han’s attention. “You talk to Leia about me?”

“Not relevant,” Rey tells him. She turns back to Poe. “How quickly can we get ships in the air?”

There’s a crash at the back of the shop, and everyone jumps, levelling blasters and knives at the kitchen. Jess runs in, still in her delivery uniform, and covered in dust. “I heard the ships, and I thought…” she gasps, “Finn?” 

“Here,” Finn says, setting his knife back down. “I’m okay.” 

Outside, there’s the whine of engines, and a not-so-distant explosion. Everyone flinches, and Jess moves through the shop until she’s at Finn’s side.  

“Poe,” Rey says, “how soon?” She’s calm and deadly and beautiful, and Poe takes a breath, and reaches for Finn’s hand to steady himself.

“Twenty minutes,” he says. “I’ll go to Maz: she’s got ships and pilots to spare, and she’s been here longer than any of us.”

“Make it fifteen,” Rey says. “Take Finn and meet us at the Falcon. We’ll lead the attack.” 

“The shop…” Poe begins, softly and Jess claps him on the shoulder. 

“I’ll take care of it,” she says, taking the blaster from his hands. “You get up there.”

+

It’s a fast, brutal fight.

When he thinks back on it, Poe can’t remember much more than the solid warmth of Finn beside him in Maz’s pub. Maz’s wide, worried eyes, and the blast that hits the ground near them as they run for the docking bays, tearing chunks out of the permacrete walls, and knocking them all off their feet. 

Chewie greets them in the docking bay with a bandolier slung around his torso, and roars encouragement to the other pilots as they scramble for their ships. Poe has never seen combat, and he knows this isn’t really combat, but it feels like war: the swearing and shouting and running as he and Finn help everyone into their ships.

Snap Wexley has an old X-wing that he flies as part of a protection racket for delivery freighters that shuttle goods from planet to planet in the neighbouring system, and Poe pounds on the side of his ship, bumping fists with Snap and disconnecting the fuel port for him, before making sure his grumpy old Astromech droid is in place.

Iolo Arana has a V-wing airspeeder, nearly twice as old as he is, and he salutes Poe before dropping into the cockpit and powering up the ship. There’s another shriek of engines whining overhead and Poe ducks beneath a permacrete overhang and runs for the Falcon, sliding into one of the gun ports at Rey’s instruction.

A ragtag handful of ships take off with them, and Rey and Han lead them into the fray. From the gun port, Poe has a view of their spaceport, and his heart thuds in his chest as the TIE fighters careen in and out of his vision. In the gun port above him Finn swears at length, and Poe wraps his fingers around the controls and fires back when the Falcon jolts with a direct hit to their shields.

Something that feels larger than he is is blooming around his bones, pressing at his skin from the inside, and he laughs when Finn blasts a TIE fighter out of the sky and cheers so loudly his voice echoes through the ship.

He’s always thought of Yavin 4 as home, and it’s true that the forested moon is important to him, but this spaceport is truly his home. The green-blue sky and the way the buildings look golden in the setting sun, the shop with its old tables and big ovens and battered espresso machine, Finn, at his side in sleep and on the lease, Rey, unguarded in her interest in the fruits Poe imports and the stories Han tells, Maz and Jess and Snap and all of the others… all of them, are home.

The Falcon shudders again with another hit, and Rey swears colorfully over his headset. Swinging in his gun port seat, Poe aims, and fires.

It’s over in less than an hour, four of the TIE fighters destroyed in the sky above the port, one grounded and fired upon in the rock spires just outside their home, and the other chased into atmo by Karé Kun, who takes it down with a ruthlessly well-placed shot and a bit of luck.

Poe’s hands won’t stop shaking when they land in the battered docking bays: with adrenaline or fear, and Finn catches them between his own fingers and presses sweet kisses to their tips, only releasing him to give first Rey, and then Chewie and Han, rib-cracking hugs.

+

Later that night, back in the comforting lamplight of their apartment above the pie shop, Rey comes in from the refresher with her hair tangled and still wet, and she sits at the base of their bed. Finn is napping amid a mound of pillows, and Poe is sitting beside him, holding his hand and humming the melody he remembers his mother singing to him. He moves his feet to make room for Rey, and scoots closer when she shakes her hair out over her shoulder.

“I’m not as good at this as Finn is,” he warns her, and she shrugs. He combs his fingers hesitantly through her hair, wincing when he hits a tangle, and carefully separating it out into three sections.

“The one on the right goes under the one on the left,” Finn mutters from beside him as he works. “No, the other one. The middle one. No, to the left.” 

He huffs sleepily, and there’s a rap on the doorway, and they all turn to see Jess, holding a tray crowded with mugs. Poe raises an eyebrow at her, his fingers still in Rey’s hair, and she makes a face at him. “You’re terrible at that, move over.”

She sets the tray down, and nudges Poe out of the way with her hip, unravelling his efforts, and starting over. “Han’s sleeping downstairs,” she tells him while she works, her hands moving quickly. “The Wookiee ate all your chorizo.”

“Great,” Poe says, settling back against Finn’s side. “That’s good.”

Jess finishes Rey’s braid with a flourish, and ties it off with a piece of string Rey hands her. 

“When are you leaving?” She asks, scooting backwards to make room on the already crowded bed, and handing around mugs of coffee laced with whiskey. Jess’ idea of comfort is a bracing slap on the back, a stiff drink, and the strongest shoulder you could ever need to lean on. 

“Tomorrow morning,” Rey says, wrinkling her nose at the taste of the drink, but tapping her mug against Jess’ just the same. “Chewie’s going to finish repairs on the Falcon tonight.”

“After he finishes eating all of my sausage,” Poe grumbles, and Finn snorts loudly.

“When’s the General arriving?” Jess asks, over Finn’s laughter. 

“Tomorrow, with the Resistance escort,” Rey says. “I think she’s looking forward to yelling at Han in front of everyone.” She shrugs, and finishes the rest of her drink, tapping the bottom of the mug for the last drops of coffee and whiskey.

They subside into silence for a long while, Rey contemplative, Jess drumming her fingers against her mug, Finn tracing circles around Poe’s palms.

+

The Resistance arrives early the next morning. None of them have gotten much sleep, and Poe makes Han, Chewie, and Rey an enormous breakfast to send them off, cracking eggs and toasting bread, and brewing strong coffee so they’ll be able to keep their eyes open.

They leave the same way they came: quietly and without fanfare. The Resistance ships are old and weathered, and Poe salutes the General and passes her a vacuum-sealed slice of strawberry rhubarb crumble: his mother’s specialty, and the General’s old favourite. 

The Falcon is as fixed as she’ll ever be, and Chewie leaves them with a huge, hairy hug. Han gives them both a gruff handshake, and a heartfelt pat on the shoulder, then turns stiffly, and follows Chewie out of the shop. 

“Hey,” Poe says quietly, catching Rey by the arm. The new coat she’s wearing – something Jess ordered for her – is soft and warm under his hands and he’s glad for it. “I want you to call us if you need us. If you need anything. If you need back-up, you call us,” he says, looking into her eyes, “we’ll be there. I promise: if you need us, we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“You don’t have a ship,” Rey says, trying to pull her arm back.

“I’ll buy one.”

“You own a pie shop on a tiny moon,” Rey says, her eyes crinkling with mirth. “You can’t afford one.”

“I’ll sell the pie shop,” Poe says readily, and squeezes her hand when she stares at him, all mirth gone in place of honest disbelief. “And if that’s not enough, I’ll steal one.”

“You’d get caught,” she whispers.

“My ma was the best pilot in the Resistance in her day,” he tells her. “We wouldn’t get caught.”

Rey nods, and looks down at the communicator she hasn’t let go of since General Organa gave it to her, and his fingers around hers, and the rucksack at her feet stuffed with warm clothes and shrink-wrapped sandwiches, and all of her favourite desserts, along with a small box of strawberries that Finn and Jess had packed carefully, and that she doesn’t know about yet.

“If you need anything,” Poe repeats softly, and she nods, takes a breath and meets his eyes.

“If I need anything I’ll call you.”

Poe smiles at her, pulls her hands up to his mouth to kiss her knuckles. “Good luck,” he says, and smiles when Rey takes another deep breath and then flings her arms around his shoulders, squeezing the breath out of him. He presses his face against her shoulder and holds on, praying to all of the saints he’s never believed in for her safety. _Saint Christopher, steer her true_ , he thinks, as loudly as he can _._

Rey draws back after a moment and wipes tears off of her cheeks with a shaky smile. “Thank you,” she says softly. “For everything you’ve done. Watch over Finn for me until I get back.”

“I will,” Poe says, and then knocks her on the shoulder gently with his fist. “Go get ‘em.” She grins at that, and hitches her rucksack over her shoulder, heading for the door, where Finn is waiting to say his own goodbyes.

They share a tearful, tight hug, and Finn rests his forehead against Rey’s for a long time, whispering to her before he lets her go to where Han and Chewie are waiting with the Millenium Falcon.

Poe follows them out, because it’s the _Millenium Falcon_ , and it’s a beautiful, sacred ship, and he wants to watch her fly again.

Finn follows him and slings a warm around Poe’s shoulders. He’s wearing Poe’s jacket, and waving frantically to everyone he can see. There’s rubble all around, but people are bustling through it, fixing  what was broken, and grieving what was lost.

Poe can Rey’s face in the cockpit as the ship lifts from the ground and pivots gracefully in the air. His fingers itch a little at the smell of ship and ether, but Finn knocks gently against his hip and takes his hand, calming the urge to flee.

There’s a distant hum from far above their heads as the Falcon gains speed, her blue tail lights glowing. They’ll be out of the moon’s atmosphere, into the deep black of space in just a few more minutes, and Poe will still be on this moon, holding Finn and baking pie and making a home for Rey, and whoever else needs one to return to.

Beside him, Finn cups his hand over his eyes to catch the very last glimpse of the ship and then turns to Poe with a smile, leading him towards the crews cleaning up the destroyed market; leading him towards home. 

+


End file.
